


What's Mine Is Yours

by cherrytart



Series: Burglarising [6]
Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/M, Flashback, Fíli and Kíli are adorable, I don't have a hobbit problem, Other, a lot thick, and frodo's, and just a little bit thick, billa baggins cannot catch a break, crappy title is crappy, i know not what i do, lobelia takes the wheel, okay, pippin's dad somehow snuck in, this is what happens when you leave me alone with a keyboard, what
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-31
Updated: 2013-02-06
Packaged: 2017-11-27 17:47:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/664712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherrytart/pseuds/cherrytart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A burglar and a prince have a long overdue conversation. Among other things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so here is part six, and even though it's short I'm actually pretty confident about this one- probably thanks to all the lovely comments you all left last time, all of which made me flap about like a loon. There may or may not have been happy squealing.  
> Enjoy.  
> Edit: Forgot to actually mark this as part of a series when I posted it. Sorry for any confusion.

“We must return to Erebor at once.” Unsurprisingly, the first words out of Fili’s mouth are the ones Billa has been least looking forward to hearing.

“We being…?” Billa looks up from the row of camellias she has been pruning, grabbing a rag to wipe her hands.

“You know of what I speak, Billa.” He sounds as though he despises the very words he’s saying, but say them he does.

“I’m afraid I don’t, actually. Pray tell.” She pushes herself to her feet and peers down to the other end of the garden, where Freya is playing some kind of game involving matchsticks and a wall built of soil. 

The night itself had been silent and raw- Freya had fallen asleep on Fili’s lap, and since he had been loath to relinquish her, they had not spoken until now- Billa had slept in a chair by the hearth, waking in fits and starts until the tug of her daughter’s hands on her skirts and Lobelia’s rattling about had alerted her to the start of a new day.

Then- well, Billa had made breakfast and shook Fili awake and sent him off to wash while she and Freya ate and Lobelia tutted, then came outside to tend the garden on strict orders from her cousin’s wife (after it became apparent that nobody was paying attention to her ire, Lobelia had commandeered the guest bedroom for the night, and is right now clattering around in the kitchen doing something unknowable to the dishes).

Neither, for that matter, does Fili, who rocks back on his heels, gritting his teeth. “This is not…you are not…how can you expect me to keep silent while you hide away here with _my uncle’s heir_.” His voice is desperate, imploring.

And Billa cannot stand it. “She is not his heir.” she feels the words drag themselves from her throat, rough and sharp and bitter. “You are. You are crown prince of Erebor, heir to the throne under the mountain.” She chooses her words frantically, not knowing whether they are intended to hurt or to plead. “Freya is your uncle’s bastard. Nothing more.” And her voice is hushed now, for true as it is and Fili has to hear it, she will not subject her daughter to that particular honesty.

Fili, however, reels at it. “You cannot be so heartless.” he shakes his head as though in bewilderment, as well he might.

“Can’t I?” Billa asks softly, aware of how hollow she sounds. When Fili’s remaining eye seems to twitch in wordless condemnation and his long scar stretches itself against his roughened skin, she tries to hold his gaze, but finds it impossible.

Sighing, she moves to the bench she had been sitting on when she first bade good morning to Gandalf (or something thereabouts), lowering herself to the smooth wood and wrapping an arm around her stomach- the way she had done in Imladris when Freya lay dreaming within her, warm and safe as could be.

“I could feel her, you know.” She says, not really caring if Fili is listening or not. “Before she was born, when I closed my eyes I could hear her heartbeat inside me…or I thought I could.” She looks at him then. “I _love_ her, Fili. More than you could ever know, I…”

“Oh, Billa.” He sighs, coming to sit next to her and drawing an arm around her shoulders. She relaxes into him for a minute, smelling leather and silver and swords and the ever-present hint of Kili that has somehow not worn off in all the months of his journey to the Shire. “Dwarves…we do not judge children for the manner of their birth. Dori, Nori and Ori’s mother…”

“Yes, I know. They have different fathers….” Billa scuffs a hand under her nose.

“And she married none of them. Her children were no less beloved for it.” Fili takes her hand. “The same will be true for Freya.”

Billa looks at him, seeing how badly he wants her to believe it. How badly he wants to believe it. Stiffening, she pulls away. “But it cannot be and it will not be. Thorin is a _King,_ and I am just a halfling-”

“Web cutter, path finder, barrel rider, master burglar? You are not just anything, sweet.” Fili’s voice is gentle, but she can sense his need to make her relent.

“It does not matter. Thorin threw me out.” She leans away and lifts  her hair from the back of her neck, showing Fili the little white marks that remain from where Thorin’s nails and his heavy rings had dug into her neck- when he’d taken her by the scruff and shook her, his other hand digging into her hair, pulling her, hurting her in his thoughtless fury.

“If he’d of been aware of your true intentions, of your condition, you know he’d have kept you-” Fili protests, and Billa fights the urge to spring up out of her seat.

“Kept me?” She replies. “Oh yes- locked me in a room somewhere in Erebor and waited for me to whelp so he could snatch my baby from my arms and sling me down the mountain. Don’t mind if I do, master Fili, not at all.” Her breathing is rapid, her mind in a whirl. Many a nightmare she’s had about that happening, of Thorin’s hard eyes on her rounded stomach, of her daughter carried away from her and the great doors of Erebor slamming shut.

Separating them. Forever.

“Stop.” Fili orders, not touching her but holding her still by the granite in his voice. “You know that wasn’t what I meant.” he says.

“You weren’t there, you didn’t _see_ him.” Billa protests. “Fili, you cannot know what it was like- ask Bofur if you will, or Dwalin or Ori. They saw Thorin in his rage, and could not move to help me when he cast me out.”

That isn’t true strictly, Billa reminds herself. Bofur had tried to reason with Thorin whilst Ori, sensing a crisis, had run to fetch his brothers. The rest of the company, minus Thorin’s heirs who were who knows where doing who knows what as they were apt to be, had filed in to see her disgrace.

 Dwalin had hauled her up by her arms when Thorin had dropped her, and held her there, awaiting the judgement of his king. It was Dwalin she had feared beyond all else finding her out, for his loyalty to Thorin is cast in stone, deeper and more implacable than any plea of hers could ever even touch.

She had almost blurted it out when Thorin finally stopped yelling, told him that she was with child, his child, and to please please forgive her, she hadn’t meant for it to go this way- but it was Dwalin’s hands, like manacles round her arms, that stopped her. If she had told, it would’ve changed nothing.

She would’ve been trapped was all. Thorin would still have looked at her with eyes blackened by hatred as he waited for her to give him his child before sending her away. Mayhaps it would’ve made her betrayal worse, for Freya is of Durin’s blood, and it is the line of Durin she meant to take their greatest treasure from, even as she soiled them by bearing a bastard.

Instead, when Thorin had ordered her out of his sight and Dwalin had begun to drag her towards the door, she had snarled at him to let her go, then picked herself up and looked one last time into the faces of her companions. Oin and Gloin averting their eyes, Dori shaking his head, Ori looking close to tears… Bofur had tried to say something, Bifur _had_ said something but she hadn’t understood it, and she had turned and stumbled away and none of them had the heart to follow her.

“They told us.” Fili says, and Billa tenses- truly she had forgotten he was even here. “Trust me, we heard it all when we returned.”

“Bofur told you?” she asks, for really, who else?

“Aye.” Fili nods. “Him and Balin. Kili…he was crazed when he heard it. I had to stop him from going for Thorin, or…”

“Or going after me.” She finishes, a painful twist turning in her heart. Kili, her sweet brave Kili who knew more, understood more than he ever let on….

*

_“Have you so little care for modesty that you would have me out in the open, Thorin Oakenshield?” She asked, pushing at his chest even as she shifted beneath him, not entirely sure how he had come to be on top of her beneath the blankets._

_He nipped at her jaw rather than answer her directly, and before she could do anything other than blink and sigh in supplication her skirt was rucked up past her thighs and his braies were undone and he was moving inside her and oh, how could it be that she wanted him so?_

_He made her forget, that night, made her forget they were hidden from prying eyes only by blankets and darkness, that the company slept around them and that anyone could be listening. Her world narrowed precisely to Thorin, his scent, his touch and the feel of him against her._

_This time there was no strong, rough hand clapped over her mouth to quiet her mewls for **more more more,**_ **please** _, and she bit down so hard on her lip that she almost drew blood, but then his tongue was there, soothing the sharp cloying taste and making her keen softly with pleasure._

_She knew she would hurt tomorrow, wake up with dry, swollen lips and bruises blotched along her pale skin, but by the time he was done with her she could not bring herself to give one thought to it. Here was what mattered, here and how Thorin’s face was buried in her neck, his arms around her keeping her close to him, her body thrumming helplessly against his._

_Thorin leant back on one elbow, holding her with one brawny arm under her back, and Billa wanted to look away but couldn’t, felt her cheeks flood crimson under the heat of his gaze. “Tell me, my little burglar, are you calm now?” he asked, seeming both amused and serious._

_“Calm?” She replied, trying to shift but finding herself pinioned against his chest in what was a surprisingly comfortable position. “You have ruined me, my king under the mountain. I should not be calm.” She was only half teasing, and wondered if his sudden growl was because of the title she afforded him, which only served to increase the force of his possession._

_“Ruined…nay, burglar. I believe I shall keep you for mine own.” Thorin whispered against her mouth, then pulled her down towards him with a fist coiled through her hair, not so much kissing her as bruising her lips with his own, making her slick and trembling all over again. He drew back though, and pressed his mouth more gently against her forehead. “Sleep now, my halfling.”_

_It was as Thorin’s breathing began to even out that Billa chanced to raise her head from his chest and investigate the source of the rustling she was sure she had heard in the last minute. Her eyes alit immediately on a shape moving to the edge of the campsite, one of the dwarves, who turned back before he disappeared and met her gaze with eyes as soft and dark as the earth which his ancestors mined._

_Barely thinking of the late hour or her immodest state of dress or what on earth she was doing, really, Billa slipped herself carefully from Thorin’s grip, found a blanket to wrap herself in and followed him, picking her way between the trees with concern and confusion knotting in her chest. It was beyond cold, here in the outlands beyond Mirkwood, and though Gandalf had said they would soon reach the house of a friend of his, Billa was beginning to doubt the wizards certainty._

_“Kili?” she chanced a whisper into the black of the night, wishing momentarily for sharper dwarven eyes, for though her kind could go unseen and unheard if they chose, they most definitely could not see in the dark. Still though, it was almost as if she could sense his eyes on her, rich and deep and not looking away even for a minute._

_“Kili, I don’t know what’s- oof.” Suddenly, the breath was knocked out of her as two sinewy arms wrapped around her waist, sending her off balance and almost sprawling in the dirt. As it was, she found herself encircled in Kili’s surprisingly strong grip- his face pressed into hair and clinging unreasonably tight._

_Being held- held **onto** \- like this was not new to her- it was the way her younger cousins would wrap their arms round her legs or hips and plead with her not to go home from Brandy Hall or Great Smials. The way a child grown too soon would clutch at a treasured toy, not knowing what else to do now they were expected to act the adult. Suddenly, Kili’s desperation seemed not so odd after all. _

_Tentatively, she put her arms around his shoulders and gave a few gentle strokes to his unbraided hair. “Kili, love, what’s wrong?” she asked in a whisper- she thought she knew, but since he didn’t seem inclined to speak (and mercy, even saying that to herself sounded odd), she felt she had to prompt him._

_Kili mumbled something into her shoulder. “What?” Billa asked, trying to guide his head upwards, but he only held her harder._

_“D’you love him?” She was eventually able to make out from the muttering of Thorin’s nephew. “D’you?”_

_“Yes.” she admitted quietly, wishing she didn’t have to say so since it all seemed fast and muddled, but it is true- she has been falling in love with Thorin Oakenshield and his damnable determination and his weathered face, rough hands and rougher laughter, his grudging nobility of sorts and the warm heart she sometimes spied beneath the iron layers he cloaked himself in, falling in love by degrees for heaven knows how long._

_“Good.” Kili sighs, hands shifting slightly on her back, loosening a fraction and allowing her some semblance of breath. “But…”_

_“But what, Kee?” She asked, reaching for one of his hands and threading her fingers through his. To anyone who came upon them now, this would seem unforgiveable- that she was willing to lie with Thorin and let him call her his, then embrace his nephew like this, his sister son who would surely seem jealous to people who didn’t know them or their lives._

_It was not like that. Billa did not know precisely what it_ was _like, but she knew she loved Fili and Kili as her own brothers, as her own nephews almost, which might be presumptuous, but she had discovered over the past months of this journey that controlling ones emotions are not always so easy, however respectable it might seem._

_“But you can’t leave now.” he whispered, sounding hoarse and half furious. “Not now not ever.” If Billa had known then how that phrase he was so fond of using would slip into her own speech, that the line of Durin would ever mark her so deep, she might have proceeded differently._

_But she did not, and so she tried for the truth “I’m not so sure that I want to. My home…” Oh, her home…was it here? No, but close, she could barely perceive it but it almost did not feel like it was the Shire, or perhaps it did and she carried it with her now that her heart had grown to fit thirteen loutish dwarves inside it, and space enough for her to be something like sure._

_Not yet. But soon._

_“Thorin. He’s your home now, yeh?” Kili said. He was starting to sound a little more like himself rather than a touch starved dwarfling, which Billa supposed was a relief._

_“Maybe.” She replied gently, stroking his hair again. “Everyone else too.”_

_“Him and us and Erebor. But you can never…it’s not…”_

_“Kili, it’s alright.” Billa tried her best to soothe him. Kili was ravenous and passionate in everything and so so young, and she knew not what to make of him right now._

_He drew back and looked at her, dark hair falling into darker eyes, the roughness of his face more pronounced by days in the wild. “If someone else is your home, then how can you know when you get there? Or if you’ll ever be where you’re s’posed to?” he asked._

_And now she knew. He was no longer speaking of her and Thorin, but of his brother. Closer than close, those two, bound stronger and deeper than the roots of the mountain they ought to have sprung from but had never seen, never touched. Only having themselves, growing around one another like runner vines, rooted together, needing the other to thrive, to survive._

_It was not fair, she had to pause and think, that Fili and Kili had known no home but what it meant to be a brother._

_She would get it back for them, in any event. Her boys, her king, her friends. Billa swore to herself as she smiled for Kili and kissed him gently on the cheek, that she would bend the heavens and the earth to reclaim what is theirs._

_“It’ll be alright.” she told him, bright and almost joyful in the thick cold darkness that suddenly felt so immeasurably lovely in her certainty. “We’ll make it so. Everything will be alright. And that’s how we’ll know.”_

_*_

“Is he alright?” She asks Fili quietly, the missing like an ache in her bones. How long has it been there- since the day she last saw the peak, or even before that?

Home is a tricky thing.

“Course. Or he will be, once things are sorted.” Fili has that irritating determined look again, the kind he gets when he goes about getting what he wants. Billa frowns at him, but cannot bring herself to scowl.

“By sorted, you mean-”

“He doesn’t know the meaning of the word, of course.” A sharp voice offers from behind them. Lobelia, of course, only done up in her most expensive coat and lacy bonnet.

“You off then, Miss Lobelia?” Fili asks, in such an innocent tone of voice that Billa has to stop herself from sputtering a laugh. Freya skips over and, after a moment of deliberation, twines herself, muddy hands and all, around her mother’s leg.

“That remains to be seen.” Lobelia sniffs, fixing light brown eyes on Billa. “I have a reputation to uphold as well as a responsibility to my husband’s family, and I can’t be mixing in such…company overlong.”

“Is that so?” Fili asks, and Billa nearly does explode into laughter at that point. “Sorry to hear it, ma’am.”

“That is quite enough out of you, master dwarf.” Lobelia’s eyebrows narrowed yet again. “Courtesy counts for nothing when one’s husband's cousin is accosted and impregnated by a band of roving-”

“It was lovely having you, Lobelia!” Billa says hastily, fixing a bright smile on her face and feeling thankful that Freya’s continued clinging to her leg prevents her from getting up.

“Hmm.” Lobelia picks her way to the garden gate and delivers an ominous parting shot over her shoulder. “I should be back presently.”

“Mahal forbid.” Fili mutters, as Lobelia turns the corner and disappears from Bagshot row, causing Billa’s shoulder’s to sag in a mixture of relief and, oddly enough, discontent. How very very peculiar.  

“Now,” Fili announces, turning to look at Billa and her daughter, and Billa feels her shoulders lock defensively yet again. “What are we going to do with you?”

*

As it turns out, there is not much to be done. Over the next couple of days, Fili manages to make himself completely at home, and Billa finds herself resigned to his presence. Even she is not so selfish as all that.

He is here now, and Freya has decided to adore him, and she would not force him away to the detriment of her daughter’s happiness for all the gold in Erebor.

“At least come with me to Ered Luin.” He suggests on the second night. “You could meet my mother.”

Billa raises her eyebrows at him, resolutely not looking up from the page she is scribbling on, except to add fresh ink to her pen. Curiosity bites though, probably just as Fili intended. “Lady Dis is still there?” she asks, and then blushes, having gotten into the habit of calling Thorin’s sister that due to all the other dwarves in the company doing so. (Fili and Kili call her _ma_ , but Billa thinks not to mention that just now.)

Thankfully, Freya is quite capable of diverting all attention. “Fifi, up!” she demands, and Fili swings her into his arms, tickling her belly. Billa fights a smile- he is quite lovely with her daughter, and if she chooses not to tell him that what he thinks is a childishly endearing nickname is actually the name of Esmerelda’s cat and the result of Freya’s muddlement, well, that hurts nobody.

What presses on her concerns is that, if Fili stays much longer, gossip will begin to circulate. Not many people have seen him- people tend to avoid her house since apparently scandal is contagious, but it is only a matter of time before Lobelia (and her silence and absence so far is worrying) loses hold of her tongue.

However, when Lobelia does return, it is of course in the manner that Billa least expected and with the most unlikely person imaginable.

“Well, what’s all this then?” Primula Baggins tilts her head to one side, smiling prettily in a way that Billa know can only mean trouble and possible impending black eyes.

Lobelia makes an irascible noise, and really, considering the long standing enmity between the two women, Billa would be less surprised (but probably just as unsettled) if Otho’s wife had brought Thorin Oakenshield himself to her gate. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go. I debated whether to add a chapter summary, but decided this one is long enough as it is. Thanks for all the comments and kudos last time, you are all wonderful and inspire me to keep writing. :)

“Prim…what…why?” Billa looks imploringly at Lobelia, who breaks forth in a scandalised tone.

“Well, if you’ believe it, Billa, I’d made up my mind that enough was enough, and was on my way to Buckland to fetch old Gorbadoc and maybe Rorimac if I could find him, only I met _madam_ here on the road and she insisted she’d do instead!”

“Ah. Of course.” Billa might have known that Lobelia couldn’t have resisted the urge to meddle for too long.

“Am I missing something?” Fili asks, apparently unaware that by the looks of things Primula is fixing to chop his braids off and use them to decorate her best party frock.

“No more than the rest of us are, Fee.” Billa replies, rising from her chair and tugging the curtains closed. “Sit down Prim…and you too, Lobelia, if you’re staying.”

She is, of course, and both women make themselves comfortable at the kitchen table, whilst Billa fixes herself to making a fresh pot of tea and Fili looks Prim up and down with something like interest.

“So…if it’s true that you’re some fancy pants dwarf prince o’ a mountain, then why are you dressing in things like tha’?” is the first thing Prim says, pointing at Fili’s coat, which is slung across the dresser (she had honestly meant to move it) and adding an earthy Buckland drawl into her voice that Billa knows full well is only intended to make Lobelia’s mouth purse up with distaste.

“Prim, don’t be rude.” Billa finds herself saying automatically, knowing that Fili’s brown garb is a sensitive topic.

“And what would a hobbit of the shire know of the royal colours of Durin’s line?” Fili asks, standing and punctuating his sentence with a small bow of the head, and a grin. “Milady.”

Prim though, grinning just as widely, though Billa is not sure it isn’t a carnivorous grin. “I did research.” she points out.

“You did what now, Prim?” Billa asks.

“Research. Well, what I mean is Saradoc dragged me down to Great Smials when you pitched back up with Freya, and he and Paladin spent mercy knows how long trawling through the old texts to find out about the dwarves who’d made off with you, and anyhows, maybe I was listening and I know that the Durin royal colours are blue, y’see.” Prim informs the room, looking pleased with herself.

“Oh now, speak some sense!” Lobelia chides, and Prim gives her a challenging look. Billa intervenes before another bout of hair pulling like at Esme and Saradoc’s wedding over who caught the bouquet (it was Eglantine Banks, Billa recalls, but Lobelia had insisted the rights went to one of her Bracegirdle relations, and Prim had taken exception) breaks out.

“No, she’s right. Blue…they do wear blue.” Billa tells her cousins.

“And you should wear a crown of cow parsley for all the sense you make.” Lobelia mumbles. Fili coughs, drawing attention back to himself.

“Go on then, Prince of Erebor. Regale us.” Primula smirks. “He wants to!” she protests when Billa raises an eyebrow.

“My garb is that of my father, miss. He was born in Ered Luin, and was not of Durin’s line. He died when I was a child, but my mother kept his belongings safe. She gave them to me when I came of age.” Fili says. Prim bites her lip, obviously worried she’s given offence.

Fili had worn the same travel stained brown surcoat on the journey to the lonely mountain. Billa remembers all too well- it was Bofur who’d told her, he’d known Fili’s father- and that Thorin had wished him to wear his uncle Frerin’s garb on the quest, but Fili had insisted that Kili do so instead, since Frerin too had been an archer, and the dark blue leathers were better suited to wielding a bow.

 _Kili was the spit of his long dead uncle_ , she had heard other members of the company whisper. _Small wonder then that Thorin was harder on him, if he is so like Frerin, who had fallen before the gates of Moria, bow in hand_. _Reckless and brave he was,_ _a wild wolf with royal blood_.

It scares her, for a moment to think it, because all she sees Kili, hurt, injured, dead or dying. Billa’s gaze meets Fili’s and she knows his thoughts are the same. So she works on forcing that fear away, ridding them both of it so that they might sleep easy.

Lobelia pipes up then. “A very pretty tale that was, but if you came here to do naught but pester, Primula Brandybuck, perhaps I’d best go direct to the Thain and get him to deal with this…situation.” 

“There isn’t any situation.” Billa protests weakly. Both Prim and Lobelia scoff now, because there is and she knows it, and it’s the most damnable knot. Fili is here, and he will not leave without her, and she cannot go with him, and she does not want him here, and she cannot bear the thought of him gone.

But there is no question of him staying, so where does that leave them?

“Of course there is!” Prim protests, reaching over to take Billa’s hand. “You were looking better last time I saw you, and that was but a few months ago. He turns up here all la-di-da and all of sudden you’re skin and bone again.” Prim squeezes her cousin’s fingers to make her point.

“Much as I hate to agree with _her_ , I think so too.” Lobelia’s mouth twists uncomfortably. “It’s of no help, Billa, letting this go on, none at all. You’ll make yourself ill and then who’ll look the fool?”

“I’m fine.” Billa says emphatically. “Fili can just-”

“I can’t _just_ anything, Billa, and besides, you do look a fright.” Fili gives her a lopsided smile and she fights the urge to swat at him.

“Fwright.” Freya echoes, sounding confused. “Mama boo-ti-ful.” She continues when Fili looks down at her, gently chucking her chin. “Not _frwight_.”

Billa wants to cry all of a sudden.

“Well, maybe not a fright, but you’ve turned down to a proper twig.” Fili gestures to Billa’s form. Suddenly he seems aware that all three women in the room are glaring at him, in spite of Lobelia and Primula expressing the exact same sentiments on countless occasions, if Billa recalls correctly. “I mean…” he begins, and looks nervously around.

Primula is leaning forward with her eyebrows raised, Billa’s arms are folded over her stomach and Lobelia’s long fingers tap impatiently against the table. Freya cranes her neck up to look at her cousin. “Well…you were always…” he gestures in Billa’s general direction. “I mean, when we met you were quite…”

“Plump? Rounded? Given to soft living? Pick a word, Fili.” Billa is not quite sure whether she’s joking or not. It’s true she’s thinner than she was, maybe too thin, but that’s what one gets from birthing a child that had spent the last months forcing every single thing she ate up from her stomach, grieving over misplaced loves, travelling on rations and running round after a toddler more recently.

And keeping her secrets and her silence. That too.

“Curvy.” Fili decides.  “You were…curvy. And now you’re…less so.” He gulps, and Lobelia goes in for the attack.

“Aye, that she was. And I’m sure you and your ingrate friends appreciated it greatly.” She chooses her words with seeming relish, and Fili’s scar tightens in a sure sign of anger.

“Don’t be such a nasty, Lobelia Bracegirdle, or I’ll give you what for.” Prim threatens.

“Well, she didn’t get a babe on her by keeping her legs closed and her chest covered, is all I’m saying.” Lobelia answers in a pious tone, and Billa remembers again why she generally puts on her magic ring when the Sackville Bagginses come to call. Shame coils sickly in her gut as she remembers how wantonly she’d given herself up to Thorin, how she’d panted and pleaded and let him have her in the dirt like a common-

 _No_. She will not torment herself like this. Lobelia and her like do that quite efficiently already, thanking you very much.

“I’ll not have you casting stains on Billa’s honour, Mistress Lobelia.” Fili says, his voice very low and he sounds a warrior, and a prince, and a dwarf full grown, and Billa can’t rightly tell which is more surprising.

Prim stifles a laugh. Lobelia’s mouth thins out again and her eyebrows practically disappear into her hair as she struggles for something to say- always needing the last word. “I cast no stains, your royal majestum, sir, but I take issue with the one who did so.” she eventually forces out, once again doing a fair impression of a disgruntled porcupine.

“Royal majestum?” Primula echoes, her tone all of a mock.

“Oh, hush your mouth, as if you haven’t wondered who Freya’s father is often enough yourself.” Lobelia snaps.

“Only so I can give him a right _royal_ hiding.” Primula’s chin juts out. “No offence.” she adds, sparkling up at Fili, whose look goes soft as men are apt to do when Prim turns her bright blue eyes on them.

“None taken, miss…?”

“Baggins. Primula Euphemia Brandybuck Baggins. I’m married to Billa’s cousin Drogo, and she’s my cousin as well- through her mother’s side, and removed once or twice.” Prim explains fluidly, as is arbitrary for any Shire dweller when introducing themselves to one of the big folk- if dwarves can be called such, and such introductions are not few and far between.

“Fili, son of the lady Dis, who is sister to Thorin son of Thrain son of Thror,  King under the Mountain.” Fili reciprocates, and bows again, as much as one can bow when sitting down with a sleepy toddler on their lap.

“Goodness.” Prim remarks. Lobelia, pleased at knowing something her nemesis does not, accepts a teacup from Billa and sips genteelly.

“Royal hiding, is that your intent then, Mrs Baggins?” Fili asks, amused, no doubt, at the expression that would appear on Thorin’s face had he heard Prim’s words.

“If I knew who to give it to, you can bet on it.” Prim replies, looking frighteningly happy at the prospect.

“Should I tell them?” Fili shocks the life out of Billa by turning to her and asking, just asking like it’s something they should talk about over tea. Well, they are having tea, but…

It’s no surprise, Billa supposes, that secrets have become her very own bread and butter. She’s kept her own council for close on four years, and breaking it here in her kitchen seems almost unthinkable, even in the safest possible company, which Prim and Lobelia for their gossip mongering are most definitely _not_.

“I… _no_!” Billa protests loudly and shrilly, wanting to stamp her foot but unwilling to startle Freya, who has settled to letting the chatter of the adults wash over her and playing with the small wooden bear that Fili has whittled for her. It is quite the spit of Beorn, Billa thinks pointlessly to herself.

Fili tries to speak again, but Billa cannot bear another word. “Don’t you understand, I can’t!” she almost sobs, finding herself enfolded in Primula’s arms and rocked soothingly back and forth.

“Now you see what you’ve done!” Lobelia hisses, as Billa lets Prim hug her and glare at Fili.

“You just leave off her, you hear.” Prim’s voice is just as fierce and Billa is hit suddenly by a rush of affection for the two women who have invaded her kitchen. She pats Primula on the arm to indicate that she’s okay now, but the hug loses none of it’s fierceness.

“I’m sorry, Billa.” Fili says quietly, once Primula has compromised by sitting on the arm of her chair and curling herself round her cousin’s shoulder’s like a cat. Freya decides that this looks like fun and slides off of Fili’s lap and onto her mothers, twining her arms around Billa, who gently reciprocates.

“It’s not your fault Fili. You shouldn’t have come here, is all.” Billa says, and though it leaves a wrenching feeling in her chest she can’t help but feel like she is telling it true.

“Finally, something we agree on.” Lobelia murmurs.

“Do you ever _stop_?” Prim asks, giving Lobelia a sideways glance.

“Now see here, missy, I will not have-”

“Quiet.” Fili’s voice is sudden and hoarse. The three girls immediately fall silent at the command and Billa watches as he gets up swiftly from his seat and crosses to the window, drawing back the half closed curtain and peering out. He looks for a good long while and Billa realises just then that he is in his shirtsleeves and how have they become so familiar again in such a short time?

She thinks she knows, Billa reflects as he backs away from the window, shaking his head. “Nothing doing. It’s late... I’ll see you in the morning, sweet.” he bends and kisses Billa on the forehead, Freya on the top of the head, then makes tracks out towards the guest room.

“He loves you.” Prim murmurs, dipping down so her head is level with Billa’s and she can whisper.

“Don’t be absurd, Primula.” Lobelia has taken out her crochet and is obviously fixing to stay the night again.

“No, not like _that_.” Prim protests. “Proper loves her, I mean. Like family.” She pauses to stroke Freya’s curls back behind her ears. “I like him.” she adds, darting a glance at Lobelia as she does so.

“More fool you then.” Lobelia replies, but there is a refreshing lack of venom in her voice.

“Love Fifi.” Freya supplements, yawning, and Billa thinks that it really must be time to go to bed, but she’s warm and comfortable and what Prim said about family has stilled her worries for a moment, so she leans back against the chair and focuses on how it feels just to breathe properly again.

The next morning, she wakes in the chair again to find the house empty of her female relations and Fili making a disastrous attempt at cooking breakfast. Freya is ‘helping’, which really means is propped on a stool licking something sweet off a spoon.

“Prim’s husband called round, said they should go and talk to the Thain.” Fili mumbles, and Billa, rubbing her eyes, is shocked to see a fading bruise on his cheek.

“Did Prim punch you?” she asks, a little peeved.

“Nope. Her other half.” Fili shrugs, obviously not in serious pain.

“ _Drogo_?” Billa has to lean against the table and chew her lip at the thought of easy going cousin Drogo laying hands on anyone, let alone punching Fili.

“Well. And then they just…went?” she asks. It’s not really a surprise- Billa knew the Thain and the rest of the Tooks would get involved sooner or later, once talk starts to spread, but it is really too early in the morning to be worrying about this.

“Well, no, there was a good half hour of arguing first, but then Lobelia threatened to do something unmentionable with her umbrella so they left and she cleared off.”

“Oh.”  Billa echoes. Then, alerted by a smell of burning that has not graced her house since Bofur and Bombur decided it would be a good idea to put cheese in the frying pan, she starts forward to rescue the porridge.

*

Prim and Drogo return a day later with Paladin Took accompanying them. He declines to listen to a word Fili has to say and begs Billa to come and stay at Great Smials.

“You shouldn’t be here alone with…him.” Paladin jerks his head in the direction of Fili, and Billa would be able to take his sweet attempt at defending her honour much more seriously if she hadn’t  caught him behind the hay pile with one of the Noakes girls when he was no more than twenty and he had blurted out that he _tripped and fell_.

And, well, if it wasn’t all so sudden- her Took relations had been among the most, if not directly, supportive of her raising Freya when she returned to the Shire, and Paladin wasn’t any kind of snob.

“We’re fine, sweetheart.” she tells him, giving a playful tug on one of his curls which makes him pout at her.

“Yes, but when he leaves you’ll get sad again.” Paladin points out with the remarkable candidness that will make him such a good Thain when the time comes. Billa feels as though a hole has just been punched straight through her, but it passes.

“If she comes and talks to your Da, just to make sure, will that be okay?” Prim asks, leaning over the gate with a sympathetic tilt to her head.

“I s’pose….” Paladin frowns, and it’s easy to forget he’s only just come of age.

“I can’t.” Billa says, and gestures behind her into Bag end. For what has kept her up the past night is her daughter, red faced and shaking with an awful fever that has only just abated, leaving Freya bunged up and miserable.

These coughs and colds are common enough at this time of year, but Freya gets so crotchety when she’s ill and really, it is Fili’s reaction that scares Billa that most.

From the first sneeze, he’d scarcely left Freya’s side, and she has a feeling that dwarven children do not often get ill, and if they do it is a sign of something serious. She might worry if there was room in her head for it, but Freya is a sturdy child, stronger than most her age, and she seems to be on the mend now.

Not well enough for the journey to Tuckborough, though.

“If she goes back with you, do ya promise to let her return?” Fili inquires from the doorway, arms crossed over his chest and eyebrows raised expectantly.

“We don’t presume to tell Billa what to do.” Drogo says stiffly.

Fili laughs then, sharp and rough. “No, Mister Baggins, only to do what you think best.” he says, not entirely joking.

“Be that as it may, I can’t go, not with Freya in this state.” Billa has a peculiar feeling, like there is something watching her every move and if she puts one foot wrong her fragile house of cards will topple.

“I’ll look after her.” Fili suggests, breaking the moment of silence that Billa had foolishly taken for acquiescence.

“A moment, please.” she says, shoving Fili back inside and closing the door so she can…what? All she knows is that she did not sign on for this today.

“Billa, if it’ll make them leave us alone-”

“I’m not leaving her. And don’t give me that look because it’s not about you or me it’s about Freya, she’s my baby and I’ve never left her before and I don’t intend to either.”

“Billa-” Fili starts.

“No.” she says, feeling fierce and a little like a lion herself. Or maybe a particularly feisty corgi. “You don’t get to decide this.”

“I know. But you can trust me.” he says, taking her hands.

“Don’t be an idiot, I know that.” she says, plunking down on her mother’s hope chest so she can see into her little girls room but still look at Fili.

“Oh really?” Fili asks. “Then tell me this, Billa. What is her name?” The question gives her pause, truly, because this is something she has considered, turning it over and over in her mind but finding it frustratingly hard to unravel.

“Freya.” she says quietly, and when Fili groans at her she gives him a weary smile. “Just Freya. That’s all.” Billa tries to make it sound alright and is almost surprised by how much it suddenly does _not_ sound right.

“She is of the line of Durin-” Fili starts, but Billa stops him with a tilt of her head.

“I know. Perhaps that’s why I did not…it wasn’t my place.” she knots her hands in her lap, frowning. Fili grunts quietly, as if he had not considered that.

Thorin had told her his true name once, whispered it into her ear that overcast afternoon in Beorn’s garden, when the sky had been heavy with rain and she’d felt his skin catch and mould against hers.

 _He was dark and rough with sweat and hair and the wear and tear of life on the road. The place where their bodies met burned, and she loved his touch better than any she’d ever felt or would ever feel. His breath on the shell of her ear, the rough slide of the foreign syllables as they settled into her heart along with all her other new discoveries, for her to keep secret and safe and_ quietly, quietly now halfling or they’ll hear, hush, my own _, **by all that’s green in the world have mercy, Thorin, please, I need-**_

She cannot say it, that word- she can sound it in her head, hear it perfectly well as if he’d only just spoken it to her, handed over that tiny part of his soul fresh and new and shining. She knows it as exactly as she knows her own name, as she knows Thorin Oakenshield, as she knows any other word.

Albeit this one is more secret, more precious, and speaking it aloud…it is something she has never even thought of attempting. Base. Wrong. Heretical, almost. A betrayal, certainly, and there have been enough of those.

Dwarves keep their mother-tongue close, jealously guarding the language as they do all the other deep secrets of their race, hidden within them right from when they sprang from the earth. Other than Thorin’s name, Billa knows perhaps three words in that tongue- please and thank you or some version thereof from conversing with Bifur, and another word Thorin liked to use which she thinks must mean _mine._

It was that word he had uttered, harsh and disbelieving, when the Arkenstone, dislodged from the folds of her dress as she lifted it, had rolled across the floor to rest at his feet, reflecting the dim light in his chamber off its thousand empty faces. She hadn’t known whether he’ meant her or the stone.

Or  if it had even mattered.

 “I’ll look after her.” Fili says, once the silence has stretched too long- she lets that happen a lot now, Billa finds. “I promise.” he adds, pressing his lips together.

It is in that moment that she realises that they are not just his lips, but they are Kili’s lips. Thorin’s lips. Her daughter’s lips.

Maybe that is why she says yes, alright then, and leaves for Tuckborough an hour later with her shawl wrapped round her tight, hauling herself up onto Lobelia’s pony trap and sighing when Prim makes an exaggerated display of inspecting the wheel spokes, causing Lobelia to hiss in aggravation.  

She looks back once, and sees her daughter sitting on Fili’s hip, bundled up against the weather and head resting on her cousin’s shoulder. “Love you Mama.” she almost thinks she hears Freya call, her little voice choked up by her cold. Billa hates to leave her, _hates_ it, but she has to set things straight with her relations and with Fili, she thinks, her baby will be alright.

 _Give her a name._ She wants to say _. Give her a name, Fili of Durin’s line, a true name since I cannot, a name worthy of her birth…._ but it is not her place, and so Billa Baggins turns her face to the wind, unaware of the hidden eyes glued to her back.

*

Primula knows the second they step through the door that something is wrong. They’ve been gone barely a day, managed barely to pacify the Took’s, all of whom would much rather Billa remove from Bag End and bring Freya to live at Great Smials, and have been saying so ever since she returned to the Shire.

Billa has managed to persuade young Paladin and his father the Thain that she wasn’t in imminent danger of further debauchery at Fili’s hands, and that no, an influx of dwarves was not in the offing, and that yes if her current house guest made any trouble she’d call on them immediately for assistance. And a good thing too, Primula can’t help but decide- Billa’s soft where those dwarves are concerned, even if she herself can’t see it.

Lobelia drops them at the end of Bagshot row and turns the trap off towards her own hobbit hole- Prim imagines Otho must be quite lost without her there to nag at him from dawn to dusk. Perhaps she’s being unfair, and it’s the kind of thing gentler souls like Esme would chide her for, but Prim does not concern herself with that overmuch.

Lobelia doesn’t matter now anyway- what matters is the deathly cold in Bag-end, and the quiet that Prim has never heard even when they went in to find it empty months after Billa went off adventuring.

They had all expected her back, but not with a baby. And now there is no sign. Prim looks at her cousin and has never seen her face this white, this drawn. “Fili?” Billa calls, and her hand grasps at Primula’s wrist almost frantically.

Primula lights a candle, and then wishes she hadn’t. The kitchen door is jammed open, and lying on the threshold is the blonde dwarf, flat out unconscious and face down on the floor. They must have knocked him out, whoever they were, then went about their burgling.

 Not even registering the absence of her cousin at her side, Primula races to him and hauls him over so she can check his pulse.

He is breathing, thank god, and she slaps him a little to try and wake him. It is when she is getting water to throw on his face that she hears a low crash from some other room. Not thinking, she douses Fili until his eyes roll back and his fingers reach out and grab at hers.

“Freya.” he croaks, and Billa makes a sound like an animal and Primula _knows_ , she heard Aunt Belladonna scream like that the day old Bungo passed, hoarse and horrible, wordless because grief is without sense when it is raw like this and Prim is selfish enough to hope she never has to experience it, that she and Drogo will die together, please please don’t let him go where she can’t follow.

Fili pulls himself to his feet, and they run. When they reach Freya’s room, it might look ordinary at first glance. But a cupboard is overturned, and it’s draws scattered and emptied, the the teddy bear gone from the table. And in the middle of it all is Billa, kneeling at the head of her daughter’s bed with her hands fisted in the tiny quilt and a look like smashed glass on her face.

“Where is she?” Billa asks, looking imploringly at Fili, who seems frozen in place, unable to speak but for a low wordless groan under his breath at the scene in front of him. “Fili. _Where…is…my…daughter?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry.  
> *hides*

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually the first of a two parter, so this individual fic will have another chapter. And there will be shit going down.  
> Btw, asparklethatisblue on tumblr continues to make beautiful art for this series, and I really need to learn how to link things in these notes. Until next time...


End file.
